


Lost

by celeste9



Category: Primeval
Genre: Action/Adventure, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-It, Guns, M/M, Minor Violence, Plotty, Sharing a Bed, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-28 10:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Connor gets trapped on the wrong side of an anomaly, but he's not as alone as he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Began life as a couple of drabbles that can be found on my LJ. Written for Trope Bingo, 'time travel'. Started for round one, but... Thanks to fififolle for the beta.

“Come on, come on…” Connor raced across the forest floor, stumbling over roots and praying he wouldn’t do something as idiotic as trip, hearing the shouts from up ahead.

And then he skidded to a stop, too far, too late, watching the anomaly close.

He was trapped. Oh, fuck.

“Chin up, mate,” a voice said, and Connor turned to look, hope swelling in his chest.

There was Captain Ryan, solid and sturdy and the best thing Connor had ever seen. “Couldn’t keep it open for you but damned if I was going to let you get stuck on your own.”

Connor just stood there staring for a minute. He was stuck, he was stuck somewhere in the past with nothing but the clothes on his back, a small bag slung across his back, and Ryan. He had Ryan with him. He grinned, which was probably totally inappropriate, but _Ryan stayed for him._

“Oh my God,” Connor said and lunged forward, flinging his arms around Ryan. “Thank you, thank you for coming back, you’re amazing. I could kiss you! But I won’t. Because that would be awkward.”

Ryan pushed him back firmly but not unkindly, his expression caught somewhere between horrified and amused. “It’s my job, right? I’m here to look after you.”

“I think this is going above and beyond the call of duty.”

Ryan smiled. “I aim to impress.”

“Consider me impressed,” Connor said and then looked around them. The shadows were beginning to lengthen and while Connor certainly was no survival expert, he figured now would be a good time to go about searching for shelter for the night.

His stomach grumbled. And food. Food would be good. What he wouldn’t give for some pizza.

Ryan shifted his hold on the gun he was carrying. It was a little bit disturbing how happy Connor was to see Ryan fully armed. “Let’s have a look around. We need to find somewhere safe before it gets dark.”

He set off determinedly through the trees and Connor followed. Before too long Ryan came to a halt in front of an enormous tree, the lowest branch as high as Connor’s head.

“Should be able to see a lot from up there,” Ryan said, grasping the branch and hauling himself up.

Connor was kind of impressed at Ryan’s upper body strength, he wasn’t going to lie. He eyed Ryan warily as he clambered up the tree. “I’m, uh, I’m just gonna stay down here, yeah?”

Ryan’s voice drifted down, barely showing any strain at all. “Suit yourself!”

After a few moments, Ryan called down, “There’s a river, just there. I can see the edge of the forest and then it’s all plains. What time did you say this was?”

“Oligocene. Climate cooled down so the rainforests got pushed back; it’s mostly deciduous forests and big open stretches.” Which translated into big mammals, really big mammals, Connor thought, but didn’t say. He didn’t need Ryan hearing him start to panic. It was beginning to sink in that he was stuck here. He was _stuck._ He wasn’t here to explore, to help the professor and Stephen collect samples, to take advantage of the open anomaly and Lester’s unexpected benevolence. He was stuck here and he might never get back. He wanted to think of it as an adventure, like he had done when he’d come through. He wanted to think of it as a tremendous opportunity, because it was, and there was so much to see, but in the back of his mind he was afraid, even with Ryan here with him.

Ryan was climbing back down and he jumped the last bit, landing nimbly on his feet. “The forest’s safer as it’s more enclosed, but we still need somewhere to sleep. We could use one of the caves in the cliffs, over there,” Ryan said, pointing. “They don’t look too far to walk. Closer to the plains than I’d like but at least we should be able to see anything that’s coming for us.”

“That’s reassuring,” Connor muttered. _Not._ “What about the anomaly?” He reflexively glanced back in its direction. “We won’t be able to see if it opens.”

“I know, Connor,” Ryan said, not ungently, “but we can’t stay here. It isn’t safe.”

“Couldn’t we…” Connor chewed his lip. He didn’t even know what he’d meant to suggest; he only knew that going farther away from the anomaly site scared him.

“Do you want to sleep in a tree?”

Connor glanced back up at the tree Ryan had come down from. The bark looked terribly smooth and even if he could climb it, the branches were nowhere near big enough for him to feel like he wouldn’t fall off in the middle of the night. “Not really.”

“Then we need to get to the cliffs. All right?”

“All right.”

Ryan gripped Connor’s shoulder, gazing down into his eyes. “You have to trust me. We’re going to get out of this.”

Ryan’s eyes were blue. Connor didn’t think he’d ever noticed before. He nodded. “Okay.”

Somehow, Connor believed everything Ryan said.

-

It wasn’t too far to the cliffs, just as Ryan had said. As they walked, Connor found himself jumping at every noise, every bird call and every scurrying sound. They still hadn’t seen anything but Connor felt like eyes were on them all the time, watching, waiting. He supposed, when it came down to it, they were safer here than they would be in, say, the Cretaceous, but there were still plenty of creatures that would doubtless find them easy prey.

He busied himself with listing the sorts of animals they might find. Entelodonts, oreodonts, hyaenodons, indricotheres, chalicotheres, _Cynodictis_ , _Hoplophoneus_ , _Amphicyon_ … The more he thought of the more Connor wanted to panic. He could feel his breathing start to quicken and thought he might actually hyperventilate. 

Was the Oligocene better than the Paleocene and its giant carnivorous birds, or the Eocene and _Andrewsarchus_ , though? No _Andrewsarchus_ in the Oligocene. That was good, they were scary, Connor would not like to meet one of them on a dark night, no sir -

“Connor,” Ryan’s voice broke in.

“What?” Connor said, startled.

Ryan had stopped walking, eyes still scanning the area, keeping a grip on his gun. “There,” he said, gesturing.

Connor’s eyes lifted up, scanning the huge rocky expanse of the cliffs. They seemed to stretch right up into the sky. “Um, what?”

“The cave. Down a bit.”

Connor squinted, like that would help him see better, and then he finally noticed the small opening in the side of the cliffs, not more than a narrow crevice. “You saw that from the tree?”

Ryan shifted. “Er, well, I might not have seen it exactly, per se.”

“You didn’t know there would be a cave?”

“It was a logical assumption.”

“A logical assumption,” Connor repeated.

Ryan actually looked uncomfortable, like he’d been caught doing something wrong. “Yes, logical, and if I’d been wrong we could have gone up in the trees. I thought it better that we at least try.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter, right?” Connor relented. “You were right, there’s a cave. But, uh, maybe you should go in first?”

It looked dark and confining and Connor suddenly had a vision of it not being empty. He backed away slightly.

Ryan didn’t remark on it, just strode forward confidently. He did everything confidently. It must be nice to be Ryan, to be so sure of yourself.

The cave was higher than ground level, maybe ten feet up or so, but there were easy footholds (or at least, Ryan made them look easy) and Ryan hauled himself into it without much trouble. It did, however, look like a tight squeeze. Connor was glad for once to be so scrawny. 

“It’s safe,” Ryan yelled back after a minute. His head popped back into the entrance and he pushed himself out again. “Let’s gather up some wood for a fire.”

-

The inside of the cave thankfully widened a bit, though it was still too low for either of them to stand completely upright. Ryan built up a fire near the entrance, both for their comfort and to hopefully ward off anything that might get curious in the night. After that was crackling merrily away, they went to gather up some ferns to use as bedding. Pathetic bedding, it had to be said, but it would at least be better than laying on solid rock.

They were forced to content themselves with a couple of energy bars Ryan had in a pocket and a chocolate bar of Connor’s that they split for dessert, as it had grown dark and Ryan didn’t want to risk going out for food. Connor wondered what sort of food Ryan had had in mind.

Ryan sat by the fire, going through the pockets of his tac vest, which contained a frightening amount of extra ammo but also a lot of other things as well. Connor half-wanted to ask him if he’d been a boy scout but decided against it. Instead he rummaged through his own pack, feeling a bit stupid. Why had he not taken anything seriously before he’d gone through the anomaly? He had never thought anything could actually happen, that he could actually get stuck. If he had, he would have taken more care packing.

All he had was a half-empty water bottle, a packet of water purification tablets because Abby had nagged (he would kiss her the next time he saw her, he would, just let her try and stop him), a notebook and a few pens, a couple of Dairy Milk bars, and a penknife because he’d liked the idea of having it. Oh, and his mobile, though he highly doubted that was going to be any use.

He couldn’t stop himself sighing as he gazed down at the pathetic lot of it. That was his problem, he never took anything seriously enough, if he had only just actually thought for a moment…

“What’s the matter?” Ryan asked, breaking into Connor’s thoughts.

Connor also, apparently, couldn’t stop himself being honest. “You know I wouldn’t make it without you, right? If you hadn’t come back…”

“You don’t know that.”

“Uh, yeah, pretty sure I do. I had no weapons and I probably couldn’t have hit anything even if I did, not to mention nearly no supplies. I can barely take care of myself when I have a roof over my head and central heating and running water and shops down the street.”

Ryan leaned forward to grasp Connor’s shoulder, just as he had earlier by the tree, looking intent and serious. “Never underestimate yourself, Connor.”

“I’m not, I’m just being practical! I don’t know the first thing about surviving. All I’ll do is… I’ll just get you killed as well.” Connor let his gaze drop down from Ryan’s face to his chest. It was really broad. He dropped his eyes farther so he was looking at his own knees.

“Everyone has their strengths,” Ryan said firmly. “That means you, too. You can tell me things about the creatures, about the time we’re in, that I’d never know on my own.” He released Connor’s shoulder and shrugged, a small smile playing about his mouth. “I think we’re going to make a pretty good team, actually.”

Connor felt his own mouth slipping into a smile. “Yeah? Well, maybe.”

“Just listen to me, okay? Listen to me, and trust me, and we’ll be fine. Now get some sleep, I’ll take first watch.”

“Okay.” Connor curled into a ball on the ferns, wishing desperately for his nice, soft bed.

“Oh, and Connor?”

Connor rolled over, blinking at Ryan’s hunched shape in the flickering light. “Yeah?”

“Take this,” Ryan said, pulling a pistol out of his holster.

“You want to give me a gun?” No one ever wanted to give Connor a gun. Not even when he asked.

“That would be why I’m giving you one.”

“I can’t fire that,” Connor said, sitting upright.

“Please, Connor,” Ryan said, still holding the gun out, muzzle facing down. “I’ll give you a lesson tomorrow but if something happens to me, I need to know you’re at least armed. Point at what you want to shoot and pull the trigger.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Connor muttered, but he gingerly accepted the gun, immediately setting it down on the ground beside him. Mostly when he asked for a gun, he was joking. To be honest, he didn’t even trust himself to fire straight. The idea of having one just made him feel cool. Like Stephen. Stephen always looked cool when he had a gun. Then again, Stephen looked cool without a gun as well.

“It isn’t easy, but it is straightforward. It’s loaded, so don’t aim at anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable killing. Especially me, no matter how bossy you think I’m being.” Ryan turned away and melted into the shadows at the front of the cave.

“Was that a joke?” Connor called, but he didn’t get a response. He lay back down, not sure if having the handgun so close made him feel more or less safe.

What he did know was that having Ryan sitting watch, alert and sturdy and competent, made Connor think that maybe they really would get through this.

-

Even with Ryan there, that first night was miserable. Connor wasn’t sure he’d even slept at all. Every time he closed his eyes another noise would make him startle, and his imagination was far, far too good.

When it seemed like ages had passed and Ryan still hadn’t got him for the second watch, Connor realised that Ryan _wasn’t_ going to get him, he was trying to stay up the whole night and let Connor sleep, like he was a child. And as if Connor was getting any sleep, anyway. He knew Ryan would get more good out of a rest, as he could probably sleep no matter what. He’d survived war zones, after all.

So Connor crawled up to the cave entrance and annoyed Ryan until he gave in, going over to lie down on their makeshift bedding. Then Connor stayed up and spent the rest of the night even more miserable, sitting in the opening and imagining that every dark shape was about to come and have them for dinner.

The dawn came as a tremendous relief. They were still stuck in the Oligocene, but nothing seemed quite as scary in the daylight, nor as hopeless.

As promised, Ryan spent the morning teaching Connor how to shoot a gun. Connor hated how loud it sounded every time he fired, certain that it was going to bring a herd of hungry carnivores down on them. It didn’t, though, and by the time the sun was shining high in the sky and sweat was dripping down the back of Connor’s neck, he thought he could at least be trusted to land a bullet in what he was aiming for, if not in the exact spot he wanted. Provided the target was big.

Luckily, a lot of the targets in the Oligocene were going to be big. Or should that be unluckily? He wasn’t too sure.

Anyway. He probably wouldn’t shoot himself (or Ryan) and he could probably manage to hold anything off long enough for Ryan to get there and save him. Connor wasn’t too fussed about the needing to be saved thing, so long as the end result was not being dead.

No one could ever accuse Connor of being too proud.

“You’ll keep it with you then? At all times?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Connor said, taking the pistol (it was a SIG-Sauer P226, apparently) apart and putting it back together like Ryan had showed him.

“Promise me.”

Connor peered at Ryan’s face, surprised at his fervent tone. “I promise.”

“Good. Wouldn’t do for you to get hurt after I’ve gone to so much trouble.” Ryan wasn’t even looking at Connor, just at the gun in pieces around Connor’s sitting form.

“Be a shame for your effort to be wasted,” Connor agreed. He wondered if Ryan had come back for him because it was _him,_ or if he would’ve done for anyone. He wondered how upset Ryan would be if Connor got hurt, or killed.

He wondered why it mattered so much.

-

Ryan dumped two fish on the ground by the fire, gutted and cleaned. “Thought this would be good for dinner,” he said, sounding almost cheerful.

Connor blinked down at them and then looked at Ryan. “You got fish?”

“Caught them in the river, farther upstream. Think you can cook them?”

Connor bit his lip. To be honest, he had no idea what to do with them. He could barely cook when he had an oven and a microwave, let alone an open fire. But he didn’t want to tell Ryan that, he didn’t want to be even more useless than he already was. All he had to do was stick the fish over the fire, right? How hard could it be?

“I’ve got this,” Connor said.

Some time later, Connor was left with the burnt remains of the fish smoking in the ashes. “Damn it!” he shouted, resulting in Ryan sneaking his way back over from the cave’s entrance. He always had to partially crawl the first bit until he could work his way more upright, though not to his full height. Not even Ryan could stop it from looking mostly awkward.

“What’s wrong?”

“I hope you weren’t hungry,” Connor answered, nudging the burnt chunks with a stick. “Bet you wish you’d just left me here. I told you, I’m hopeless at survival.” Too bad it wasn’t Stephen instead of him. The two of them would’ve had a grand old time together, being manly and shooting things.

Ryan just looked at him with that same steady gaze. “That was never an option.”

“Yeah, guess you wouldn’t want the guilt or whatever, considering I’d never have made it on my own.”

One step forward and Ryan was laying his hand on Connor’s shoulder. “Ground rule? No feeling sorry for yourself.”

Connor nodded.

“Okay. For this to work, we need to work together. Connor Temple, I’m going to teach you how to survive.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Hold it more like this,” Ryan instructed, standing behind Connor and repositioning his grip on the crudely fashioned spear.

Connor caught sight of a fish flitting by under the water and lunged for it, missing again and nearly sprawling into the river himself. He blew out a breath. “I’m never going to catch one.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy. You’re getting better at it though,” Ryan said in an encouraging tone. “It took me ages to catch those two last night.”

He knew Ryan meant well, but that actually made Connor feel worse, as he couldn’t stop thinking about how all of Ryan’s effort had been wasted by Connor ruining the fish. He made a half-hearted stab for another fish, unsurprised when it got away.

“Wait,” Ryan hissed, tensing.

Connor froze in place, listening to the unmistakable sounds of something crunching through the undergrowth.

Ryan seized Connor’s elbow and tugged him away, guiding him carefully to the shadow of a tree. They watched as a huge, rhinoceros-like animal with leathery skin and a long neck tramped through the forest to stop at the edge of the river, lowering its head to drink. A pair of white birds were perched on its back.

“It’s an indricothere,” Connor breathed, speaking as softly as possible. “ _Indricotherium._ Or, maybe, _Paraceratherium_ , there’s disagreement about-- Anyway, largest land mammal ever.”

“It’s certainly big,” Ryan agreed.

“And herbivorous. It won’t hurt us, but still, probably best to keep out of its way.”

“I shouldn’t like to startle it, I know that.”

“It was the inspiration for the AT-AT walkers in Star Wars, you know,” Connor said, never taking his eyes off the creature. As scared as he was at the prospect of being trapped here, never able to return home, sights like this almost made it worth it. Who else could say they’d seen an indricothere in its natural habitat, so close that if he wanted, he could walk a few yards and touch it?

He could hardly wait to tell Professor Cutter.

Ryan’s breath hitched like he was stopping himself from laughing.

Connor found himself grinning. “Consider yourself educated.”

-

They didn’t do too badly, all told. The Oligocene had had fairly drastic wet and dry seasons, but it appeared they’d been lucky. They likely had arrived just after the worst of the violent rains but before drought started to set in. They were able to manage well enough with food, by fishing (which Connor was pretty decent at now, he liked to think) and hunting. Ryan could sometimes catch a few of the small, rodent-like mammals. Cooked on spits over the fire, they were lean and tough but perfectly edible.

They were wary as far as plants went, but had learned of a few berries and other vegetation that were safe to eat, through trial and error. They avoided anything that looked off and tried tiny amounts of promising-looking specimens. If they ate a small amount and didn’t end up ill, they knew it was safe. Early on they’d had a few mishaps, to be sure, one or the other of them heaving in the dirt. Ryan was of more use than Connor, as he’d picked up things from survival training and there was at least some resemblance to the plants they were used to. Connor mildly regretted that he’d never had an interest in paleobotany, if only for the purpose of having something intelligent to contribute.

Water hadn’t become a problem yet. They protected their plastic water bottles like gold, refilling them frequently at the river. If and when the purification tablets started running out they’d need to start boiling it, which was going to be a problem. Connor had found a sort of shallow, hollowed-out rock that could work as a platter, but it wouldn’t be able to hold much water. Mostly Connor kept telling himself any day now, any day an anomaly will open. An anomaly will open and you won’t have to worry about any of it.

In the meantime, it was kind of cool, being in the past. Not that Connor wanted to stay there, obviously, he missed computers and takeaway and the comic book shop on the high street, but it was still, honestly, pretty amazing. Seeing all the things he’d only read about, the creatures in his database flesh and blood instead of images and text on a screen.

A chalicothere shambling along through the trees, dragging its knuckles almost like a gorilla. A kind of snapping turtle, he wasn’t sure what exactly, that Connor had backed very carefully away from, because he wasn’t Abby and snapping turtles weren’t cool.

Well, okay, they kind of were, but he liked his fingers and toes and didn’t want to risk it.

Then there was the _Cynodictis_ , small and not unlike a dog, they’d seen creeping out of its den in a riverbank. “It’s probably got pups in there,” Connor had said quietly as he and Ryan watched. They’d stayed far away so as not to disturb it. It was small, but any animal was fierce when threatened, particularly when babies were involved.

On one memorable occasion, Connor and Ryan had hidden behind a rock formation and watched as a pair of male entelodonts faced off. It was both fascinating and horrifying to watch, as the huge, aggressive pig-like creatures bashed at each other. One latched on to the other’s snout with its jaws, gouging in deep.

“Remind me to keep out of the way of those things,” Ryan had murmured, while Connor just kept watching, unable to tear his eyes away.

“It’s amazing,” he’d said, trying to burn the sight into his memory so he could tell Professor Cutter. He wanted to remember _everything,_ even if the professor and Abby and Stephen were the only ones he could ever tell.

-

Connor was lying on his stomach, trying to sketch a picture of the small lizard that was peering at him from the ground. He wasn’t much of an artist, but he thought Abby would like it. When they got back.

“Connor,” Ryan said, stomping over in his heavy boots, and the lizard scuttled away.

Putting away his notebook with a sigh, Connor rolled onto his back and looked up at Ryan, shading his eyes with his hand. “It was only a lizard! Really not dangerous, I could have squashed it, so don’t start lecturing about--”

“Come with me,” Ryan interrupted, already turning away.

“You’re so chatty,” Connor said, getting to his feet and jogging after Ryan. “Don’t you ever stop talking? It’s really getting annoying, Ryan.”

“Don’t want you to forget what a human voice sounds like.”

Connor grinned. “Where are we going, anyway? The river?”

“Got it in one.”

“Are we fishing again? I thought we were good on the fish front.”

“You’ll see.”

In spite of Connor’s efforts, he didn’t get anything more out of Ryan until they’d arrived at a stretch of river, not where they fished, but more downstream where the water was slow-moving. Ryan was scanning the area for predators, but it appeared empty for the time being.

Then he removed his tac vest, closely followed by his t-shirt.

Connor stood there, knowing he was gaping, unable to drag his eyes away from Ryan. Who was stripping. “Um,” he said, very intelligently. “Ryan, why are you taking your clothes off?”

“Because usually when I take a bath, I take my clothes off. Don’t know about you, though.”

“You’re taking a bath? In there?” Connor tried to think of any aquatic predators that might be lurking in the depths. It wasn’t all that deep, but still. There was much more in the fossil record from the oceans. Maybe there were piranhas? There could be. In a shallow river. Definitely.

“It’ll only be a minute,” Ryan said, and now he was naked. As in, he had no clothes on. At all.

Connor was trying extremely hard to focus on Ryan’s face. It was possibly the hardest challenge he had ever faced. He hoped he wasn’t as red as he felt.

Ryan sat down on a smooth rock by the bank, examining the water surface before he dangled his feet in. He started splashing the water around, which wasn’t doing much to help Connor’s staring problem. Now Ryan wasn’t only naked, he was wet and naked.

“Going to just stand there?” Ryan asked, his mouth quirking like he was amused. “We need to be quick about this.”

“Okay,” Connor said, because he couldn’t have put actual thoughts together to save his life. He wasn’t sure he wanted to purposely get closer to wet, naked Ryan (well, okay, he wanted to _a lot,_ but jumping Ryan would have been a horrible idea, even he knew that) but he couldn’t think of a good excuse not to.

He left his boxers on. He knew that was pretty gross, and he felt self-conscious doing it, but he would have felt way more self-conscious to take them off.

Luckily the water was cold enough to solve one of Connor’s problems and Ryan was nice enough not to comment on Connor’s display of prudishness.

They didn’t have soap or anything, but Connor did feel better when they were done, having the opportunity to rinse off so much of the sweat and dirt he had accumulated. He’d even dunked his head long enough to try to work the knots out of his hair. Ryan got out of the river and, still naked, carried his bundle of clothing and weaponry some distance away from the river. He spread out his jacket and his uniform over the ground and laid down on it, stretching out in the sun to dry off.

Connor’s mouth felt incredibly dry and he hurried to lie down next to Ryan, training his eyes on the sky above. “Guess you won’t have to worry about tan lines.”

Ryan chuckled. “I hate having a white arse, don’t you?”

This line of conversation had been a mistake. Connor knew Ryan was more teasing than serious, but now all he could think about was Ryan’s arse. White or not, it was a nice arse. “My arse is always white,” he muttered.

“If this is how you get tan, no wonder,” Ryan said, a pointed sweep of his gaze over Connor’s underwear.

“I’m not really an outdoorsy person.”

“Colour me surprised.”

“Outside there’s, you know, _outside,_ ” Connor said. The elements, bugs, exercise. He’d much rather stick to his computer inside four walls.

“Yes, the outdoors generally are outdoors,” Ryan said, utterly deadpan. It reminded Connor of Lester.

Connor kind of missed Lester, a little bit. That probably meant he _really_ needed to get back home.

-

There was a pack of hyaenodons in the area. They discovered this fact gradually.

The first clue was the noise at night, creatures growling and calling to each other down below the mouth of their cave. It woke Connor up and he crawled over to sit beside Ryan, gazing down into the dark depths beneath them.

“What is that?” Ryan asked.

Connor shrugged. “A pack of something, but there are a lot of predators down there.” Still, his mind helpfully supplied, _hyaenodon, hyaenodon,_ because a pack of them was definitely not something Connor would like to get caught in the middle of.

In the morning, they found the remains of something unidentifiable, completely picked over. Connor was shuttling between being appalled to thinking, _oh my God, awesome,_ to feeling a vague sense of fear, and then back to _awesome_ again.

“We should move,” Ryan said, fingering his gun and gazing around them.

“Yeah? Move away from our cosy little cave, trying to find something as secure, which we maybe will never find, and which will probably have some other scary pack of somethings by it anyway?”

Ryan gave him that look again, like he was startled by Connor actually having a practical thought, and then he shrugged. “Okay. We’ll stay, but if I catch you trying to… to find these things and study them or something, I will hit you.”

Connor didn’t doubt it - he remembered Professor Cutter’s ill-fated encounter with the butt of Ryan’s gun in the Permian. He thought there likely wasn’t much Ryan wouldn’t do if he thought it would help keep people safe. “Kapow,” he said, grinning.

Ryan rolled his eyes.

They found other little things after that, footprints and carcasses and dung and then those sounds again, usually at night. Hyaenodons probably hunted mostly at night. The footprints were dog-like and big.

When the indisputable evidence came, it was dusk. He and Ryan were out later than they would have been ordinarily, filling water bottles and tracking down something to eat. They’d been lucky, finding a young, wounded chalicothere whose meat would feed them for ages. Connor had had to look away when Ryan shot it, feeling ashamed, but Ryan hadn’t said anything. He knew that it was only survival and he knew that the animal would have died anyway, likely meeting a far less kind fate than Ryan’s bullet to the head, but it bothered him all the same.

They were on their way back to the cave with all the raw meat they could carry when it happened. Connor thought he was imagining things at first, soft rustling around them, dark shapes and shining eyes, but Ryan held his hand out to stop Connor from going farther and took his gun out.

It was too late, though. The pack had surrounded them.

It was hyaenodons after all.

Connor suddenly thought of Jurassic Park, and the raptors, and wanted to giggle in a mad, hysterical sort of way. He had wandered into a movie and now it was the part where the redshirts got eaten, except they didn’t have any redshirts, it was only him and Ryan. There wasn’t anyone else to draw focus. Only them, and the pack of hyaenodons. Deadly and utterly beautiful.

The biggest one, larger than a wolf, crept forward, teeth bared, a low growl issuing from its mouth. Its legs bent in a crouch as it moved, preparing to dart forward. Ryan tossed two big chunks of meat, one towards the big male and one to its right, and the hyaenodons snapped at them, the meat disappearing far too rapidly. There wasn’t enough to give Connor and Ryan more than the smallest of head starts.

“Your gun, Connor,” Ryan said quietly. “And when I say, you--”

But Connor knew it was useless, he knew they wouldn’t get away, neither of them, and Ryan would die trying to protect him but it would be no good, he’d never be able to outrun them, and they were perfect, they were frightening and _perfect._ “No,” he said. “No, Ryan, don’t shoot them, it won’t help.”

“I’m not going to fucking lie down--”

“Don’t shoot _them,_ ” Connor repeated, and Ryan got it.

He shot once into the air, the sound obviously startling the pack, and then he shot at the ground by the leader’s feet. It yelped and jerked back, growling louder, and Ryan fired again. The pack dispersed in a flurry of movement.

Connor felt like his blood was surging with adrenaline, more excited than afraid. And he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t going to be.“Did you see them? Did you see them, Ryan?”

“Hard to miss them, Connor.”

“But did you _see_ them? Those are apex predators, Ryan, they’re incredible!”

Ryan just stared at him, and then uttered this breathy sort of laugh. “You’re insane,” he said, and nudged Connor into motion.

Later, when they were back in their cave and cooking bits of their well-earned meat over the fire, Connor said, “Thanks for not shooting them.”

Ryan didn’t look up, only continued turning the meat. “If they’d made one move towards us, I would’ve aimed for their hearts.”

“I know,” Connor said, unable to decide whether he was comforted or scared.

-

Every day, Connor made a tiny mark on the wall of their cave to mark the passing days. One more mark and he and Ryan would be at three weeks in the Oligocene. Connor already felt like a different person from the boy who had gone through the anomaly, now with a scratchy growth of beard on his face and his skin sun tanned, and he’d even noticed the appearance of a hint of muscle definition in his arms. Probably from all the protein. He could shoot a gun and skin an animal, he could fish and not burn the results. He didn’t feel like quite as much of a liability any more, like a weight pulling Ryan down.

He knew he would never be like Stephen, someone who could be Ryan’s equal, but he liked to think he was no longer useless.

He even liked to think that Ryan liked him, a little. Ryan smiled at Connor’s stupid jokes and he listened to Connor’s rambling. Before the Oligocene, Connor could probably have counted on one hand the number of times Ryan had spoken to him outside of things like, “Run!” or “Get out of there, Connor!” Mostly he had felt like Ryan tolerated him as a faintly annoying necessity. But now he thought maybe Ryan actually liked him. In any case, Ryan never shouted at him or told him to shut up, which was saying a lot.

Ryan also never told Connor to stop talking about finding an anomaly home, even when the days kept passing and an anomaly never opened.

Until one did.

Connor wasn’t even looking for it, he was just walking, following the path of birds overhead and watching them swooping in the air, and then it was simply there. There in front of him, hanging there like the answer to everything.

“Anomaly! Anomaly!” Connor shouted as he sprinted across the plains to reach Ryan. He really hoped there wasn’t anything around to hear the racket he was making but he couldn’t stop himself.

Ryan came running to meet him. “Where?”

“Back that way,” Connor said, pointing. “It looks strong, like it’s only just opened, but if we’re going through I don’t think we should wait all the same.”

“Of course we’re going through,” Ryan said and set off at a run towards the cave, where their kit was.

“We don’t even know where it goes,” Connor said, struggling to keep up with Ryan’s long, quick strides. “It isn’t the one we came through, I know that.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to check.”

“No, I do,” Connor admitted. Of course he did, he was only trying to be sensible. He could be sensible. “But what if it’s somewhere worse than here?”

“Then we’ll come back.”

 _If it doesn’t close on us first._ Connor watched Ryan pull himself up into the cave and said, “Okay.” He only hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Maybe it did go back to their own time, after all. He could hope, anyway.

He had little else left besides hope.


	3. Chapter 3

Connor stepped through the anomaly into what looked like a destroyed world. The sky was clouded over and all he could see were the signs of abandonment and decay. The buildings were crumbling, like either a bomb had gone off or it had been a very, very long time since people had lived there. Or both. “So, did we arrive after the apocalypse?”

Ryan was moving forward carefully, gun at the ready. “Better than during the apocalypse.”

“Unless it isn’t over,” Connor was unable to keep from adding.

“Let’s try a bit of optimism, shall we?” Ryan said.

“Right, always best to be optimistic in the face of an apocalypse,” Connor said, mostly to himself. He wondered if there were zombies. He really hoped not; he liked his brain where it was.

They kept walking down what, judging by the wrecked and rusted-over cars, must have been a street at some point in the past until Ryan held a hand up. Connor stopped, nervously glancing about. “What? What’s--”

Ryan moved his finger to his lips and Connor shut up. He edged off to the side, Connor following, and crouched down low. “We’re being watched,” Ryan said softly.

Connor felt his heart plummet. “By what?”

Ryan gestured with his gun and Connor noticed a shape on top of one of the buildings. A dim shape that looked like it might be taller than Ryan, with long limbs and an enlarged head. It didn’t look particularly friendly.

As they watched, they heard a sort of chittering sound, coming from nearby. Connor shifted uneasily.

“Connor,” Ryan said, still very, very quietly. “When I say, run for the anomaly.”

That sounded like a brilliant idea. Connor nodded.

Ryan said, “Run.”

Connor ran. He didn’t think about how he could hear the things chasing him, he didn’t think about the way Ryan was aiming his gun as he ran and shooting, he didn’t think about anything. He just ran, one foot in front of the other, breath coming in gasps.

And then he saw the creature leap down from the side of a building, neatly blocking their path to the anomaly.

He skidded, trying to turn before he ran straight into the thing, and then Ryan grabbed him and shoved him, hard, towards one of the wrecked cars. Connor didn’t stop to think; he just flung himself onto the ground and crawled beneath it, trying to make himself small and quiet and perhaps invisible. What he wouldn’t give for Sue Storm’s super powers at the moment. He pulled out his gun.

Ryan had blasted the creature by the anomaly right in its face but one of the others chasing them was darting in and Ryan wouldn’t see it, it would -

Connor fired. He missed, and the creature was staring right at him, and he fired again and then again. The creature was still coming for him and then Ryan was shooting, too, and finally it fell in a crumpled heap.

There were more of them, they were still coming. Ryan was bleeding and Connor didn’t even know how it had happened. “Come on,” he said, and pulled Connor up because a hiding place was no good when the things you were hiding from knew you were there.

They ran farther into the ruined city, ducking inside a doorway. The creatures were impossibly fast and there were far, far too many of them. Connor followed Ryan down into the basement, jumping the last bit because the stairs had caved in. They huddled in a corner, too dark to see anything, and Connor’s hand was gripping onto Ryan’s tac vest but he didn’t even remember doing it. He was so scared he was holding his breath, like even the sound of his breathing would attract them.

But it was silent again. When nothing burst in on them for what felt like the longest stretch of time Connor had ever stayed silent in his life, Ryan finally relaxed beside him, though he didn’t let go of his rifle.

“I think they hunt by sound,” Ryan murmured.

Connor nodded, still too worried to speak. His knees were going to give out so he let his back slide down the wall until he was sitting in a heap on the floor.

Ryan slid down next to him, his shoulder pressing against Connor’s. They stayed like that all night.

-

When Connor woke up, he was drooling on Ryan’s shoulder. It took him a moment to even remember where he was and then he sat bolt upright, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.

“Sorry!” he said, and then clapped a hand over his mouth.

Ryan’s mouth quirked in a half-smile. There was only a sliver of daylight leaking in from a small, dirty window high on the wall. It left Ryan’s face in shadow. “It’s okay,” he said, only a bit softer than normal. “I think it’s all right if we talk a little, just quietly. I didn’t hear anything during the night.”

“You stayed up all night?”

Ryan shrugged.

Connor felt like a terrible person. “You should have woken me up, I could’ve taken a turn. I’m not completely useless, you know. You shouldn’t have let me sit there like a lump, slobbering all over you.”

Now Ryan was outright smiling. “I didn’t mind.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Connor said, his cheeks flushing, only if Ryan was lying, he was actually quite a good liar. Connor had no idea what to make of that, and decided he’d go with thinking Ryan had been joking. Because the other explanation was too crazy even to be considered.

“Not lying,” Ryan said, something strange in his eyes, but he went on to say, “Are you hungry? I’ve still got a bit of that meat we saved, and some nuts.”

As if called into action by Ryan’s words, Connor’s stomach grumbled.

“I’ll assume that’s a yes, then.”

“Surprised you even had to ask,” Connor said, accepting a sliver of meat. It was one of those chewy rodents; Ryan had wrung its neck and then cooked it whole on a stick. “When asked if I want food my answer is never not going to be ‘yes’.”

“I’d noticed,” Ryan said, amused. “I don’t know how you stay so scrawny.”

“I prefer ‘fit’. Or at least ‘slender’. Come on, Ryan, you’ve got to give me something, stuck comparing myself to all you strong soldier-types.”

“There’s something to be said for slender.”

But before Connor could even think about that, they heard a noise coming from above them, a crash and a ruckus like it was from the street beyond their building. They both immediately fell into silence, Connor catching his lip between his teeth.

It was an hour before they moved again.

-

“We have to get out of here,” Ryan said.

Connor looked away, towards the window in the wall. The light was fading now and he expected they’d spend another night in darkness. They had a torch but Ryan didn’t like to use it much, not unless they truly needed it. “The anomaly might have closed. It’s been a day.”

“I need to check.”

Connor snapped his gaze back to Ryan. “You can’t go out there!”

“Connor--”

“Those things are out there! What if something happened to you?” The thought of it made Connor want to vomit.

Ryan pressed his fingers to Connor’s knee. “We can’t just sit here forever and I think you know that.”

Yes, Connor did know that. He knew that but it didn’t make him any less afraid. “Then I’ll go with you.”

“I appreciate the thought, but--”

“But you’ll be safer without me,” Connor finished for him, feeling angry and scared and _useless._ Ryan wouldn’t have said no to Stephen. Sometimes Connor wanted to be like Stephen so much it almost physically hurt.

Ryan didn’t agree but he didn’t need to. His face said it all.

_You can’t leave me,_ Connor wanted to say. _Don’t leave me._ But that was stupid and childish and he would never say it, not to anyone but himself.

Instead he said, “Will you wait until it’s daylight? If those things hunt by sound, you’ll be toast at night.” When they could hear him and Ryan couldn’t see them.

“Of course,” Ryan said.

“I’ll wait by the door, so at least maybe if you shout…” Connor trailed off. If Ryan was shouting, it would be too late anyway.

But Ryan didn’t say that. He nodded and said, “Okay,” and Connor knew he was only saying it to make Connor feel better.

It didn’t make Connor feel better, but he appreciated it anyway.

-

When Ryan left, Connor stood by the door like he had said he would, clutching his gun. His brain conjured up unfortunate connotations of wives waiting for their men to come home, waiting while they were off in danger. Which wasn’t the case, clearly, but it was still horrible.

Also Connor didn’t like that his brain was so ready to cast him as a doting wife.

Connor tried thinking of other things, tried humming the Imperial March silently in his head, but it didn’t distract him from worrying. It only made him feel like he wouldn’t be ready if Ryan needed him, so he stood there and listened for every sound.

He didn’t know how long it took until the knob turned and Connor almost had a heart attack from the shock of it, but it felt like years of his life.

“Come on, hurry,” Ryan urged, keeping his voice low. “It’s closed but I kept going, I found another, but I don’t know how long it will stay there and I don’t know how long until something sees us.”

He was already pulling Connor through the door and down the street, and Connor just let him, let Ryan yank him wherever he wanted.

Connor was staring at the sky as they ran, looking at the tops of the buildings and searching for those creatures, for their horrible faces. He felt like he could feel them watching him, all the time, and his footsteps sounded so loud. Like he was a giant crashing along and surely they could hear him, they would know he was there and they would come out, they’d jump down on him and it would be too late, he’d be dead. Ryan would be dead.

There was a light glowing in the distance, from around the corner, and it was the anomaly, it had to be. They were so close and Connor ran faster, lengthened his stride as much as he could. He was panting, breathing in harsh gasps, and Ryan was still clutching his arm, like they were fused together.

The chittering came from behind them.

Connor almost stumbled but Ryan was still pulling him along and he said, “Keep running!”

So Connor ran. He ran like his life depended on it because it _did,_ if he slowed he would be caught and then he would be dead.

He ran. He ran through the anomaly, his lungs burning, and he didn’t stop.

He felt Ryan loosen his grip on Connor’s arm and then there was a burst of gunfire. Finally Connor stopped running, turning around so sharply that he skidded and nearly fell, watching Ryan disappear in a heap beneath one of those hideous creatures.

“Ryan!” Connor shouted. As he scrambled over, Ryan pushed the creature off himself, because it was dead, it was dead and Ryan was alive and they were safe. Before Connor could stop himself, he had flung himself at Ryan, patting at his chest and then just grabbing at him and holding on, like if he let go, Ryan might disappear and leave him.

“Connor,” Ryan said, laughing a little and gently pushing Connor away. “It’s okay, I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” Connor said, trying to regain his composure. “Yeah, of course.” He stepped back and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead because bloody hell, it was hot. He could feel trickles of sweat dripping down the back of his neck just from standing there.

“Where are we now?” Ryan asked.

Connor looked around. They were in a grove of trees, mostly these sort of palm tree-looking plants and huge conifers, with ferns covering the ground like grass. Everything was green and brown, nothing flowering anywhere. “Dunno for sure,” he said, moving forward and trailing his fingers up the trunk of a tall tree. “Probably Triassic? Late Triassic, though. It’s possible we could be getting into early Jurassic, before it started getting really humid. Except the Jurassic probably would have been greener, you know, more trees than this.” He realised he was beginning to ramble and that likely all Ryan had wanted was a simple, _Probably the Triassic._ “I think it’s the Triassic, but the animal life will tell us for sure. There was a mass extinction at the end of the Triassic.”

“Got a preference?”

Connor smiled wryly. “Plenty of things to kill us in both periods.” There was a reason they’d called it Jurassic Park, though.

As if to punctuate that statement, something roared in the distance. It sounded big and scary. Ryan gripped Connor’s elbow. “Best we get moving,” he suggested.

-

They ended up in a tree. It sucked. They had walked for maybe an hour, dripping sweat, and then Ryan had made the executive decision that stopping for a rest, even if it was nowhere safer than a tree, was their best option. Connor hadn’t argued. He didn’t fancy meeting anything while he suspected he might keel over from sunstroke. He was somewhat regretting his Yorkshire heritage at the moment.

The foliage was much thinner than the forest they’d been in while they were in the Oligocene. They hadn’t yet seen anything larger than one memorable scorpion and lots of dragonflies, though the scuttling noises in the undergrowth were a continual reminder that they weren’t alone. Connor was almost positive now that they were in the Triassic. He was faintly relieved. A lot of the exciting glow of being on the other side of an anomaly had worn off when terrifying future monsters had nearly killed him and Ryan, so he wasn’t very disappointed knowing that he wasn’t going to see an _Allosaurus_.

A _Stegosaurus_ would’ve been good, though. Maybe he was a little disappointed.

It was nearing dusk while they rested, so they remained where they were. “Better to have a look round in daylight,” Ryan said, and Connor very much supported that. “We can move early, when it’s not so hot.”

It was worse than that first night in the cave in the Oligocene. Connor felt vulnerable and exposed, knowing that he could tumble right out if he wasn’t careful, knowing that something could climb up to meet them. To eat them, probably. The noises were closer and the dark shapes at the base of the tree were like the monsters under his bed when he was a child, only this time his mother didn’t come in to turn the lights on and chase them away.

Connor let his foot press against Ryan’s calf, stretched out opposite him. Ryan didn’t say anything, but he also didn’t move.

Connor didn’t sleep for a second. He didn’t think Ryan did either.


	4. Chapter 4

It took them the entirety of the following day to find shelter better than the branches of a tree. They set off early in the morning, far earlier than Connor felt anyone had a right to be awake, and then rested during midday, when it was hottest, again taking refuge in one of the big conifers. Connor thought that Ryan probably only stopped for a break to take pity on him, to be honest. He was mildly insulted but too grateful to care much.

“The oxygen content is lower than what we’re used to,” Connor mentioned. “It’s really for the best we stop for a rest.”

Ryan only glanced at him, this kind of soft indulgence in the curve of his mouth.

Connor crossed his arms over his chest and looked away.

After their break, when they walked farther and no convenient cave presented itself, they constructed their own little hideaway. Though they’d found their way to a riverbank, they decided to backtrack a little as it seemed safer. Where the trees grew close together, they brought branches and ferns and built a small, leaning shelter. It was big enough that they could lie down and so that they could both fit comfortably inside, even if it was likely they wouldn’t both be inside at the same time very often.

“Cosy,” Connor said, standing next to Ryan as they inspected the finished product. It made him feel strangely proud, knowing he’d built it with his own two hands. Plus Ryan. Okay, maybe Ryan had done more of the work than Connor had, but still.

“It’ll do,” Ryan said and went to gather up the woody brush they hadn’t used.

He made a small fire in front of the entranceway, in spite of the heat, only to discourage any predators from poking about. Connor supposed, in that case, he could put up with it.

But he really, really hated the heat. Thank God it wasn’t the Jurassic, or the Cretaceous - Connor wasn’t sure what would have been worse, the huge carnivorous dinosaurs looking for a tasty snack or the humidity.

-

Connor and Ryan generally stuck relatively close to each other, by unspoken agreement, but it wasn’t like they were attached at the hip. Sometimes Ryan went off to do some hunting and/or gathering like the strong male provider he was (okay, yeah, Connor liked to tease him about that, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t grateful) or Connor wandered towards the riverbank to explore. Ryan didn’t exactly like it when Connor did that, but it was probably a huge display of trust that he didn’t protest.

He frowned, though. His eyebrows would draw together and he’d get this little crease between them, while his mouth turned down at the corners. Connor knew it was really, really stupid that he found that so cute. He suspected he had been too long from civilization.

There was a lot of activity by the riverbank. This meant it was more dangerous, but also terribly interesting. Connor wasn’t dumb - he always made sure he was careful. He didn’t stay long, he didn’t get too far from Ryan, he stayed out of sight, and he carried his gun. It was just that he was in the Triassic, and it was scary, it was incredibly scary, and he didn’t want to get eaten, but… he was in the _Triassic._ Fear may have mostly overtaken excitement but he’d never been able to stop being curious.

Connor liked _Desmatosuchus_. It looked like a spiny crocodile and it pushed its snout into the soft earth, pushing up plants to eat. The groups of _Coelophysis_ , small meat-eating theropods, had been fun to watch for a while, running and jumping and chattering to each other. They were nimble and quick, quick enough to snag fish from the river. Their fine senses, though, paired with their sharp teeth and claws, made Connor avoid them.

There wasn’t much to look at now, though. Connor crouched in the dirt and watched a few little things ambling about, amphibians that looked like frogs and salamanders. He contemplated getting out his notepad to sketch them.

He saw the creature lying in the shade of some large ferns moments before it surged towards him. He was pretty sure that was the only reason he didn’t end up bitten in half before he could so much as scream.

Instead, Connor grabbed his gun and shouted for Ryan, starting to fire even as the thing came for him. It was vaguely crocodilian but larger, and when it ran it moved up onto its hind legs to reveal its full height. It was so much bigger than he was, it loomed over him, it had to be four metres long. It looked like a smaller predecessor of the big theropods from the Jurassic and the Cretaceous, with its small forelimbs and giant teeth.

 _Postosuchus,_ Connor thought, as it snarled at him, a bullet lodging into its thick skin but seeming to make little difference. He was glad he knew what was going to kill him, at least. He would hate to be eaten by something unidentified.

Connor rolled to the side, avoiding the thing’s crushing bite, and he just kept shooting, aiming for the spread jaws in an attempt to get a bullet into its brain. He should have been counting the bullets, he knew. He had no idea how many he had left before the magazine would be empty. He was going to end up being like one of those stupid idiots in films, out of bullets just in time to die.

He had continued backing up, trying to keep as much distance between himself and the _Postosuchus_ as he could, but the thing was so fast, and it wouldn’t stop, and Connor couldn’t see where he was going and he stepped on something, a rock, maybe, and then he was falling. He landed on his arse in the dirt and the _Postosuchus_ was lunging and Connor fired once more.

The bullet went straight through its mouth into its brain and it fell. Connor shot his pistol again, to make sure. The _Postosuchus_ didn’t twitch.

Connor scrambled away from the dead thing, getting back to his feet. There was mud smeared all up the backs of his legs and on his hands and he didn’t care.

“Connor!” Ryan came at a sprint, holding his gun, not putting it down even when he saw the reptile lying on the ground.

Connor was shaking. He couldn’t figure out how to stop. “I killed it,” he said, his fingers trembling around the handle of his gun.

“I can see that,” Ryan said, nudging the dead creature with his toe. He finally slung the rifle back over his shoulder.

“I’m not dead.”

“I can see that, too.” Ryan made an aborted move forward, like he was going to hug Connor but then thought better of it.

Sod that. Connor wasn’t dead but he almost had been, he was only alive because he’d killed something and he’d never killed anything in his life, nothing that wasn’t a fish or a mosquito; he didn’t even kill spiders. He couldn’t stop shaking and Ryan was there and this was an opportunity, right, he needed contact and he could hug Ryan and it wouldn’t even be weird because he was probably in shock. He had to be in shock, right? Connor sprang forward and wrapped his arms around Ryan, holding tightly and hiding his face against Ryan’s shoulder.

Ryan’s arms went around Connor and he just held him, his grip firm and his body solid. He stayed there, not like before, not like after the future predators, but like maybe he needed the reassurance as much as Connor did.

“Guess I’m not useless after all, eh?” Connor said, and even his voice shook.

“Told you so.” One of Ryan’s hands was resting on the back of Connor’s neck, his fingers weaving in and out of Connor’s hair, and suddenly this didn’t feel like a friendly, ‘glad you’re not eaten’ hug at all. It felt like the sort of hug that Connor’s overactive imagination wanted to interpret as something else entirely.

Connor forced himself away, standing straight and putting a safe amount of distance between them. “Think we could eat it?” he asked, gazing doubtfully at the _Postosuchus_.

Ryan cast a questing eye over the body and unsheathed one of his big knives. “Let’s find out.”

-

It turned out they could eat it. Ryan hacked up the carcass, burying the bits they didn’t want to keep from attracting predators. They cooked it over the fire and it wasn’t half bad. Not exactly good, either, but it was far from the worst meal they’d had. Definitely better than those Oligocene rodents. He wondered if it was like what a crocodile tasted like. People ate crocodiles, didn’t they? Or was that alligators?

Shadows were dancing on the sides of their shelter, the flickering firelight and the shapes of their own bodies. Ryan was going to go and sit by the entrance soon, Connor knew, his rifle across his knees and a torch close to hand. Connor didn’t want him to leave, not even if he wouldn’t really be leaving.

“What if we never get back?” Connor said quietly. He’d been thinking it for a while now, the niggling fear perpetually in the back of his consciousness. Connor was good at putting a happy front on things, on being cheery and hopeful, but they’d been away from home, from where they belonged, for close to a month. They’d found two different anomalies and neither had panned out. They had been nearly eaten many more times than Connor was comfortable with and it was hard to keep hoping when it seemed so dark ahead of them.

“Connor...”

“No, I know what you’ll say, but what if we never do? We could just keep going through an endless cycle of anomalies, never getting one that takes us home, or we could get stuck somewhere just waiting while one never opens, or we could die! Something could eat us, Ryan, and then that would be it, there goes Connor Temple, something’s dinner. He was too scrawny, it would think later, but it would have eaten me anyway.”

Ryan laughed.

Connor blinked at him, offended. “It isn’t funny!”

“It’s a little funny.”

“It isn’t,” Connor insisted sulkily, but it was hard not to smile with Ryan’s mouth twitching like that.

Ryan moved closer, until their knees were nearly touching and Connor couldn’t look away, drawn to Ryan’s blue eyes like magnetism. “Do you know why you’ve got to keep believing, Connor? Because I can’t do this otherwise, I can’t. I need you to be the same Connor Temple who is inappropriately cheerful at inappropriate times, and I need you to be gleefully optimistic, and excited about seeing all this, because I think I’ll just fucking give up if you aren’t.”

“Ryan,” Connor said, just to say something, because that wasn’t fair, how could Ryan put that on him, and how could Connor be so important? He was just himself, geeky loser Connor, and no one had ever thought he was worth anything, and now Ryan, incredible, amazing Captain Ryan, was saying Connor was, he was everything, and -

“Stop thinking,” Ryan said, and he made this kind of small, involuntary groan, and then said something that might have been, “Fuck it,” and then he was kissing Connor.

It took a little while for Connor’s brain to wrap itself around the fact that _Ryan was kissing him,_ but once it registered, Connor took full advantage of the situation. It was probably some sort of stress reaction thing and would never happen again, so he was going to enjoy every second.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t very many seconds at all. Ryan let go of him and they just looked at each other.

Connor licked his lips. “Um… Wow, okay.”

Ryan wouldn’t quite meet Connor’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Connor immediately felt himself shrinking back, moving as far away from Ryan as their little shelter would allow. “You’re sorry? Sorry for kissing me, because it was such a horrible experience?”

“That isn’t what I meant. I’m sorry for kissing you, because you didn’t want me to.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

“Actually, no, I haven’t.”

“Okay, Captain Literal,” Connor said, rolling his eyes. “What I mean is, I definitely didn’t not want you to kiss me, because I’m not blind, and no matter what Lester says, I’m not stupid, either.”

“You didn’t not want me to kiss you?” Ryan sounded amused. “That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“Are you questioning my enthusiasm? I’m offended, I am. I’ll give you enthusiasm,” and before Connor could think better of it, before he could think, _holy fuck what am I doing this is Captain Ryan,_ he was kissing Ryan.

Very enthusiastically.

Ryan was pretty enthusiastic, though, too, to be fair. It was a good effort all around. His beard was scratchy but Connor knew he was sporting a decent one of his own so he couldn’t really complain.

Not that he wanted to complain. He was actually thinking of composing a letter of thanks, or possibly a sonnet.

He needed to stop thinking. Too much thinking had always been his problem. There was no need for thinking when he was snogging Captain Ryan because if he thought too much about it, it was entirely likely he’d freak out.

Oh, shit, he was _snogging Captain Ryan._ Connor made a sort of panicked squeak and dug his fingernails against Ryan’s chest.

“What’s the matter?” Ryan said in a low murmur, pulling back only enough to speak.

“I’m kissing you.” Granted, it wasn’t the smartest thing Connor had ever said.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “I did notice that. And?”

“And, _I’m kissing you. I’m_ kissing _you._ You’re… you’re you, and I’m me, and things like this don’t happen to me.”

“I see,” Ryan said, and alarmingly, the look on his face said that he actually did see. “Tell you what, Connor, I’m going to kiss you again. Because I don’t give a rat’s arse that ‘these things don’t happen to you’, and I bloody well want to kiss you. That all right with you?”

Connor nodded because he seemed to have lost the ability for human speech and he’d have to be a hell of a lot dumber than he was to object to that proposition. After that, there was just Ryan’s warm mouth and his hands in Connor’s hair and then his hands _everywhere,_ and Connor stopped caring about the fact that Ryan was so far out of his league it was ridiculous because Ryan clearly didn’t mind.

-

He must have dozed, because the next thing he was aware of was being hot and sticky with Ryan pulling away from him.

“That was a bad idea,” Ryan muttered, yanking up his trousers.

“Yeah, right, terrible idea,” Connor said, trying to ignore the stinging in his eyes. Why was he so stupid? It was like Abby and Stephen all over again, and like his _entire life,_ never good enough, never the one anyone wanted. “Sorry for... Anyway, sorry.”

Ryan stopped, focusing on Connor. His expression looked horrified, which made Connor feel even worse. He knew he wasn’t a catch, and he wasn’t terribly experienced, but this was a bit much.

“I didn’t mean-- Connor, I didn’t mean you. I meant, falling asleep was a bad idea.”

Connor’s cheeks were burning. “Oh.”

Ryan’s lips quirked up and he knelt down beside Connor. He cupped his hand around the side of Connor’s face, his thumb stroking Connor’s skin. “Are you sorry we did it?”

“No!” Connor shook his head a little too vehemently, dislodging Ryan’s hand. “Really, really not sorry.”

“Good. Because I thought maybe we could do it again sometime.”

“I am all for that plan, yes, sign me up.”

Ryan leaned forward and kissed him, soft and sweet. “I think if I had to be stuck in the past with someone, I’m glad it was you.”

Connor was smiling so hard his face kind of hurt. “Back at you, mate.”

It was funny that, millions of years in the past, prehistoric creatures roaming around just waiting to make him their dinner, Connor’s love life had never been so good.

-

The days were getting dryer. Connor could already see the difference at the riverbank, the way the level receded. He didn’t like his and Ryan’s chances in the dry season.

But he didn’t say anything. He knew Ryan noticed, too, and Connor didn’t want to dwell on the harsh reality of their situation, not when talking about it wouldn’t do anything to change it.

Instead he walked with Ryan and thought about how if he’d never got stuck through that anomaly in the Oligocene, maybe Ryan would never have given him a second thought. It kind of made everything worth it.

“Look,” Ryan said, pointing to the ground and throwing Connor out of his musings.

“What?” Connor squinted, and then he saw it. A half-smudged print in the dirt.

A foot-sized print. A human foot.

“Oh my God,” he said.

Ryan was kneeling on the ground, peering at the footprint, and then he stretched his hand out. “There’s another.”

“Someone’s been here,” Connor said, like it actually needed to be said. “Do you think Helen…”

“Seems likely,” Ryan said, his expression stern and hard. “She’s left a trail and I want to see where it leads.”

He started walking, leaving Connor to come after him. “Do you think it leads to an anomaly?” he asked, excited. If anyone would know where the anomalies were, it was Helen.

Ryan stopped abruptly and Connor almost walked smack into his back. From over Ryan’s shoulder, he could see the glow in the distance.

It was an anomaly. With human footprints leading straight into it.


	5. Chapter 5

This time, they walked into the anomaly and out into a dark, uninhabited room, filled with barrels and boxes, the noise of humanity seeping in through the ceiling above their heads. They were in a building. With floors and walls. Oh, God, they were somewhere modern. They might be home, even.

It felt immediately cooler, the change in temperature almost too drastic, but Connor was so relieved at the thought of not being constantly covered in his own sweat that he didn’t mind. “At least there’s nothing trying to kill us,” Connor said. There was no sign of Helen, either. Maybe that was a good thing.

“Always a plus,” Ryan agreed and walked towards the stairs. “Come on, let’s rejoin civilization.”

Connor thought he’d never been so glad at the prospect of encountering a room teeming with loud, sweaty strangers before. He took the steps two at a time.

They were in a sort of pub, clearly, but there was an abundance of long dresses and hats. Also body odour. A fire was blazing behind a grate in the back of the room. “Victorian era?” Connor hazarded.

“I’d say so. Well, we’re closer, anyway.”

“There’s people,” Connor said fervently. He loved people. People didn’t want to eat him.

A man bumped into him, dumped his beer all over Connor’s shoes, and then swore at him in a broad Cockney accent, somewhat slurred.

Ryan laughed. Connor couldn’t even bring himself to be irritated.

“Come on,” Ryan said, tugging at Connor’s elbow. “Let’s have a look round outside.”

It was cold outside the bustling glow of the pub. The wind bit at Connor’s ears and he reached into his rucksack to pull out the fingerless gloves he’d stuffed there on his second day in the Oligocene. He put them on and then clutched his arms around himself, rubbing briskly. Okay, so maybe it was slightly too cold. Still, England! He almost wanted to kiss the ground, but that would have been gross.

Ryan untied his jacket from around his waist and gave it to Connor. Connor was too uncomfortable to refuse it. “Do they have hotels here? Somewhere with a bed and a fire?”

“I think so,” Ryan said. “I mean, people certainly traveled in the nineteenth century, didn’t they? I don’t have any money, though, do you?”

“No,” Connor said, and then considered that his pound coins, with Queen Elizabeth’s face on them, probably wouldn’t have done much good anyway.

They passed a pretty woman with hair in brown ringlets whose gaze seemed to linger on them, and then she stopped. “Connor?”

Connor blinked at her. “Uh, I’m sorry, do I know you?” Which was kind of a stupid question, admittedly, because Connor clearly didn’t know a woman who had been alive when Queen Victoria was.

The woman pressed her lips together. “Not yet, apparently.”

“Not yet?”

“You’ve come through an anomaly, of course, but in the wrong order, it would seem.”

Before Connor could get his head around that, Ryan said, “You know about the anomalies?”

“Of course I do, though I haven’t a clue who you are.”

That made a sort of frightening sense that Connor didn’t want to think too hard about, because there weren’t very many reasons why this strange woman would know him but not Ryan. “Looks like we’ve stumbled into an episode of Doctor Who,” he said instead.

That earned raised eyebrows from both Ryan and the stranger.

“Doctor Who, timey-wimey, you know, don’t tell me you’ve never--” Connor shut his mouth when Ryan continued to look at him impassively, only a tiny twitch of his jaw revealing that he was probably cracking up inside. “Oh, never mind.”

The woman glanced down the street, as if searching for someone, and then gave her attention back to Connor and Ryan. “Do you have somewhere to stay? Something to eat?” She eyed them up and down. “Clothes that won’t make you stand out?”

“We’ve only just arrived,” Ryan said.

“Here,” the woman said, reaching into a small handbag and then shoving a bunch of coins at them. “Will you meet me here tomorrow? Same time? I’m sorry, I can’t…” She glanced away again. “I’m sorry, I have to go before he sees me with you. It will only cause more trouble.”

As the woman started to bustle away, Connor called, “Wait! We don’t even know who you are!”

She gave him a fleeting smile. “I’m Emily. You were a good friend to me once, and I hope you will be again.”

“Thanks,” Connor said into the growing distance between them. “I hope we haven’t just bollocksed up our entire future.”

“Maybe it would be good if we have,” Ryan said, a pensive, almost pinched expression on his face.

Connor looked at the coins in his hand and thought maybe Ryan was right. He knew he didn’t want to be in a world where Ryan wasn’t.

-

The sign in front of the large lodging house (the doss-house, as the man they’d asked had called it) claimed to have ‘good beds for working men’. From the outside, Connor very much doubted the beds would be in any way good, but he and Ryan weren’t exactly in a position to be choosy. Having no way of knowing how long they would be in this time, they needed to make Emily’s generous donation last. There were men ducking in from the street even as they watched.

“Let’s get our beds, then,” Ryan said, giving Connor a small nudge by means of a light hand to the small of his back.

Connor went inside, into a dim and gloomy corridor. There were steps leading downstairs, so he took them, Ryan following. They found themselves in a fairly large room where men had gathered to sit at one of several long tables to eat. Presumably the door at the back of the room led to a kitchen.

The smell was awful; Connor reflexively raised his sleeve to his nose. His appetite entirely fled him. The room was nearly silent in spite of the number of men present, as they all quietly went about their business. Some granted Connor and Ryan vaguely curious and searching looks, but no one approached them in any way.

“I need some air,” Connor muttered, still covering his nose, and pushed his way out of the room and back up the stairs to the street.

The cold air was like a balm and Connor took in great gasping lungfuls. Ryan rubbed his back and asked, “All right?”

“Sorry,” Connor said, somewhat embarrassed. “I just couldn’t take it in there.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Ryan said, with one of his small, crooked smiles. “It was worse than being stuck in a car with the lads after they’ve had beans in there.”

After a minute they ventured back inside to pay for their beds. They were given two large pieces of brass, as a kind of receipt. There was another room, on a higher level than the kitchen area, where more men were passing the evening.

Here, there was noise, conversation and laughter. The air was heavy with smoke and there were even games tables, billiards and checkers. Some men sat with books while others mended clothing. Notices adorned the walls describing the expected code of conduct.

They drew more notice here than in the dining hall and Connor felt himself drawn unconsciously closer to Ryan. He was glad both that he wasn’t alone and that Ryan cut an imposing figure, as he was certain that more than one man was contemplating robbery.

Ryan swept them off to an emptier corner, where he sat carefully vigilant, his blue eyes observing everyone and everything in the room.

“Do you think we could live here?” Connor asked, trailing his fingertips along the tabletop. It was sticky. He stopped and dropped his hands in his lap.

“If we need to,” Ryan said. “Just like we’ve been doing.”

Yeah, just like that. They’d made a home in the Triassic; the Victorian era would be a walk in the park. “I don’t think any of my marketable skills translate very well to the nineteenth century. Not unless I want to screw things up royally.”

“Invent things before they were meant to be invented?”

“Shame, really. Bet I could make a fortune. Too bad I’m not a super villain,” Connor sighed.

“Or just a self-centred arsehole with no regard for what’s right,” Ryan added.

“That, too.”

“Still, not being an arsehole means you get to shag me.”

“Not too shabby a consolation prize, all things considered.” Connor started to lean across the table, wanting to steal a kiss from Ryan’s grinning mouth, but he stopped abruptly. He didn’t want to get arrested.

Maybe there was something to be said for life in prehistoric times, after all.

When the lights went out, there was nothing to do but go to bed. A doorkeeper took their pieces of brass and they ascended a long flight of stairs, up to their beds. Or, more aptly, to their bed. The room they entered was too small for the number of beds in it, and many of the beds were occupied by more than one man.

So Connor and Ryan were sharing, too. Not that Connor objected to sharing a bed with Ryan. All feelings of a sexual nature aside, he felt safer with Ryan there by his side.

Connor closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, pressing lightly against Ryan from shoulder to hip in the small bed.

He woke again sometime in the middle of the night, the room still completely dark, not entirely sure what had startled him. Gradually he became aware that Ryan was no longer next to him on the bed and instead was crouching over a strange man, his knife pressed to the man’s throat, speaking in a low growl.

So it looked like someone had tried to rob them, anyway. Apparently Ryan hadn’t been enough to detract from the glow of their being transients. When the man stumbled away though, back to his own bed, Connor reckoned he was likely sorry he’d tried.

“Go back to sleep,” Ryan murmured, so Connor did.

-

In the morning they were turned out of the doss-house early along with all the other men. The men hurried off down the street in various directions, likely going to their places of employ, but Connor and Ryan went at a more sedate pace, unsure of their destination. It was far too early to meet Emily.

“You hungry?” Ryan asked. “You didn’t eat much of anything last night.”

“Would’ve thrown it all up if I had done,” Connor said. “It smelled horrible in there.”

Now, though, he accepted Ryan’s suggestion of having something to eat. There were shops and even vendors along the street, selling everything from buns to elder wine to hot eels. Some of the vendors were quite pushy, particularly the ones that had children involved. Connor and Ryan stuck to getting a couple of penny meat pies from a shop, hot and filling, made from what Connor thought was mutton. He hoped it was mutton. He knew what Sweeney Todd was about.

They whiled away the hours walking through London, stopping in shops to have a look round but mostly to warm up, staying until the proprietors started eyeing them too hard for not making any purchases. If it came to it, and they were stuck here, they would need to buy clothing. Coats, at the very least, but probably also trousers and shirts and jackets to make them less conspicuous.

Not that he would admit it, but Connor was looking forward to it. He thought Ryan would look very nice indeed in some Victorian garb. Maybe he could even convince Ryan to get a hat.

Connor really wanted one of the hats for himself. Not even Abby could fault him for wearing a hat in the nineteenth century. Or a waistcoat. See, he would fit right in.

The streets were loud and crowded and without Ryan, Connor suspected he would have got hopelessly lost. This London didn’t look much like the London Connor knew, and Connor had never even spent much time in modern London until recently anyway. Luckily, Ryan probably couldn’t get lost even if he were blindfolded. He led them straight back to the pub, where they would wait for Emily, Connor shivering without the proper clothing but thinking he had never been so happy to be freezing before. The cold felt like home.

“All we have to go on is her word. I hope we can trust her,” Ryan said, his brow furrowing.

“Do we have much of a choice?”

Ryan shrugged. “We’ve made it this far on our own.”

Connor reached out to squeeze Ryan’s hand briefly. “It might be nice to have some help for a change.”

Before they could discuss it further, Emily came striding down the street, muffled in a thick cloak with a hood over her curls. “Connor!”

“Hi,” Connor said. “You didn’t give us time to thank you yesterday.”

She waved him off. “Oh, don’t say another word. I know you don’t know me, but I know you and I…” Her eyes darted from Connor, to Ryan, and back to Connor again. “I shouldn’t say anything, but just know that I owe you a lot.”

“But not me,” Ryan said, his tone carefully uninflected.

Emily’s gaze softened slightly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know you.”

“Captain Ryan. Tom Ryan.”

Both Connor and Ryan watched her for any sign of recognition, but there was none. This was so bad, Connor thought.

“Let’s go inside to talk,” Emily suggested.

Inside the pub, they found an empty table near the back and Emily paid for beer and food, refusing to hear anything about it. “You’ve clearly had some trouble, it’s the least I can do,” she said.

“That obvious?” Connor asked.

“You look like mountain men, and you smell worse than that.”

Connor snickered and before long, he and Ryan were practically in tears, unable to stop laughing. They weren’t home, but they were in England, they were in London, and they were so close. After everything, they were so close, and they were still alive, and they had someone who wanted to help them.

Life felt pretty good.

Emily was simply sitting and watching them, her brown eyes bright with amusement, and she waited until they had calmed down to speak. “What happened to you? Or shouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t think it matters, to be honest,” Connor said, while Ryan took a long, appreciative swallow of his beer. “You said you knew me already? So I’m not sure anything can change by me telling you. It’s more what you could say to me, I think. Or maybe that’s all been buggered up anyway.”

“Time travel,” Ryan muttered, like it was a curse word.

Connor nudged his foot beneath the table, grinning. “So, what happened was, we got caught on the wrong side of an anomaly, and we’ve been trying to get home ever since. We’ve been in the Oligocene, what was probably the future, the Triassic, and now here.”

“What year was it for you?” Emily asked, her expression pensive.

“2007,” Ryan said.

Surprise registered on her face before she schooled herself back into neutrality. “I see.”

“Like I said, timey-wimey,” Connor said, picking at the wood table with his nails. “We’ve done this the wrong way round.” He wanted so badly to ask Emily how she knew him, but he knew he shouldn’t and he knew she likely wouldn’t answer, anyway.

Emily appeared deep in thought and then straightened her shoulders, seeming to come to a conclusion. “I don’t know if it will help you, but I can take you to the place where the anomaly I arrived here from opened. It would take you back to your time, or near enough.”

“Is it a recurring one? Has it opened more than once?”

Emily shook her head. “I’ve no idea, I’m sorry. I don’t… I suppose I’d have to say likely not, as your team had never dealt with it before. But…” She hesitated. “When I left, there was some trouble. There were multiple anomalies opening, all over the building. Perhaps that will be good news for you.”

Connor glanced at Ryan. “Multiple anomalies in one place?” They’d never encountered anything like that, aside from Helen’s spaghetti junction, but what Emily had said sounded different.

“Do you have a better idea?” Emily sounded as though the question was meant to be rhetorical. “You can stay here if you want, but I thought there might be some things you’re missing. People you want to get back to?”

The way she said that made Connor think she knew something he didn’t. Well, she did, obviously. But something important. He wished so much that he knew what it was.

Except… whatever it was, wouldn’t it be different now? Because she had clearly come from a time in which Connor hadn’t disappeared through an anomaly to the Oligocene. Who knew what sort of damage he’d done to the timeline?

Exactly the sort of thing Professor Cutter had been so concerned about. Connor felt ashamed, even though logically he knew he shouldn’t be. He had done the best he could, and Ryan, too.

“I think we’d best go with her, Connor,” Ryan said, his eminently sensible voice grounding Connor back in the present. “We need to find an anomaly and this is our only lead.”

Connor nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, of course.” He faced Emily. “When can you take us?”

“Now,” she said firmly. “Henry won’t be expecting me for some time. He thinks I’m paying calls.”

“Henry?”

“My husband,” Emily said, a tightness to her mouth.

Connor and Ryan exchanged another look and neither of them prompted Emily further.

-

The coach took them through London to an area Connor didn’t think a lady like Emily had any business being in. Emily, though, had no qualms about stepping out of the coach, her heels landing in a puddle of muck, which she ignored. “Come along,” she prompted, as Connor sat staring at her from the door.

He scrambled to get out and then he and Ryan followed her down the street. People gawked at Emily’s fine dress and Ryan subtly moved closer to her, like a guard dog. She ignored him, too. Connor didn’t think Emily needed anyone looking after her, to be quite honest. He was fairly sure that was a knife he’d seen strapped to her leg when she’d got out of the coach.

She took them to a grimy alley behind a row of equally grimy shops. “It would be in an alley,” Connor said mournfully. “It stinks here. Worse than usual,” he amended.

“Breathe through your mouth,” Ryan advised.

Connor tried. He didn’t like having to think about breathing.

“It was here,” Emily told them, her eyebrows drawing together and her lips pressing into a tiny frown. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“That’s all right,” Ryan said. “We’ll just--”

Connor felt a slight tugging at the gun at his hip and then the anomaly opened in a swirl of flashing lights. All three of them stood silent for a moment, gaping.

“Okay,” Connor said. “Okay, that’s ridiculous. There is no way our luck is this good.”

“Don’t question it, Conn,” Ryan said, squeezing his large hand around Connor’s shoulder.

“Perhaps someone is looking out for you, after all,” Emily said. She was smiling faintly.

“It’s just silly,” Connor muttered to himself. If this had happened in a film, Connor would have been shouting at the absurd degree of narrative license taken.

But it wasn’t a film. It was Connor’s life and he supposed he should just take it and be grateful.

“Well, this is it, I suppose. We can’t thank you enough,” Ryan said to Emily.

“As I said, I owe you a lot,” she replied. Her gaze alighted on Connor.

He shuffled in place. “I hope... I hope we’ll get to meet properly,” he said, even though he knew the likelihood was something in the vicinity of nil.

“I hope so, too.” Emily looked far less stern when she smiled. “Good luck.” She raised her hand in a brief wave, the image of her standing there in her beautiful dress against the backdrop of a dirty wall the last thing Connor saw.

The anomaly opened into some sort of warehouse, depositing them in a large, empty room. “It worked,” Connor said, turning in a circle. “It worked! This has to be what Emily meant!”

“I think you’re right,” Ryan said, and then the room wasn’t so empty any more.

They were met by a man who, even at a first glance, Connor could only describe as tall, dark, and handsome. Judging by the black combats and the shotgun he had pointed at them, he was a soldier.

“Drop your weapons!” he commanded in an almost incongruously posh accent.

Connor put his pistol on the ground immediately because the bloke looked like the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ type. Ryan only loosened his grip, holding his arms up non-threateningly. “What year is it? Do you work for--”

“I said drop your weapons!”

This time Ryan did so, though it did nothing to stop the other soldier from glaring at them. Connor bit his tongue against the urge to dispel the tension by saying something inane like, “Your shirt is really tight, is that regulation?” or “Your biceps are incredibly impressive, you must work out.”

“Connor!”

Connor forgot to breathe for a moment at the sound of that voice. From behind the soldier he saw Abby running, her short blonde hair styled differently but still unmistakably her. “Abby!” he said, taking a step towards her before remembering there was a stranger aiming a gun at him.

Abby went right past the soldier and threw her arms around Connor with enough force to make him nearly lose his balance. “Connor,” she was saying right into his ear, practically clinging to him. “Oh my God, Connor, we thought you were dead.”

“Not dead, though you’re starting to compromise my oxygen supply a little bit.”

“Sorry!” Abby let go of him, which Connor did regret because it was _Abby,_ and she was hugging him, and they were home.

On the other hand, breathing was good. A small crowd had gathered around them, black-clad soldiers and faces Connor didn’t recognise. He couldn’t even see Professor Cutter.

His confusion must have shown on his face because Abby said, “Some things changed while you were away.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” Connor said, but he edged slightly closer to Ryan and smiled at him. Ryan offered a slight upward tilt of his lips, brushing his fingers gently against Connor’s back. Some things had definitely changed, more than Abby knew.

Connor couldn’t stop grinning. “We made it.”

Ryan’s own smile widened. “Looks like.”

“We’re home,” Connor said, eyes flicking between Ryan and Abby, unable to quite believe it.

Abby took his hand. Her eyes were wet and there were streaks of tears down her cheeks but she was smiling. “You’re home.”

It was the most beautiful thing Connor had ever heard.

**_End_ **


End file.
